WebGL With Three.js – Lesson 4

Today we continue our lessons for those who study webgl, and today we will show you how to add 3D text on the scene, how to extrude two-dimensional shapes, we also will consider how to load ready 3D models into the scene using the OBJLoader. It seems to be a difficult process, but it is not – the code for loading 3D models is fairly simple.

3D text

The best way to display text in 3D enviromnemt is to use a ready 3D font (for Three.js). In general, there are many websites where you can download fonts, however we need special javascript fonts (typefaced fonts). This website may help you to convert custom fonts into javascript fonts (upload your font, hit the ‘convert’, and then follow the steps until it let you download the result). However, at the time of writing this tutorial, this service was not available, so I had to use ready-made fonts to create our demonstration. To draw a three-dimensional text I prepared the following function:

OBJLoader

I left the most interesting for the end – loading ready OBJ models. The fact that there are a huge number of ready three-dimensional objects (at various websites) that you can add into your scene, and three.js gives us this opportunity through the use of the OBJLoader class:

Hello there! My name is Andrew and I have been doing web development for years. Frankly, not only web-development, and system-development too. This site is the place where I get to teach and share my experience for the web. Read more